by Eisele, Kimi
He walked past shopping malls that looked like prisons, past silos and starving cows. He walked past a graveyard where the gravestones were crude and small, names and dates etched by hand. One had part of his name. carson adams, 1852, rip. He heard his mother’s voice. Then his father’s. June’s. Dozens of voices whispering in a cacophony of hissing and shushing, sentences he could not make out. Finally a unison chorus: Keep going, they said.
He walked over bridges and looked to the streams and rivers below. Sometimes, the currents were still and silent, but when the water rushed through, he stopped to bathe and drink. He could follow the stream. He could keep going.
He walked with the memory of June. He could see her eyes, smell her smell, hear her laughter, imagine the place below her earlobe, remember the image of her head on the pillow. The sound of her last breath dissipating. The way his hands trembled as he reached out and cupped her face and kissed it. He still missed her, but the missing was not the same as it had been. Grief lessened but never altogether evaporated.
He sometimes heard trains. The low grumble of the engine, the screech of metal on metal, the hollow horn. Phantoms, all of them, until a chain of train cars appeared on the tracks, rusting and moored. China Shipping. K-Line. Evergreen. Uniglory.
One day in October, he came upon a train yard that was home to half a dozen teenaged girls “freed” from a group home for children with unfit parents. They offered him a solar shower and a caboose to sleep in. He taught them how to kill a chicken and listened to their rules for a new society. A skinny girl with knees like doorknobs poking through holes in her jeans explained the first rule: “Forget the past,” she said.
But Carson convinced the girls to let him tell them about the Maya and their fully developed writing system, and about the epic poetic performances of the Greeks. About the Ancestral Pueblo desert people, their fingerprints still visible in the mortar between the rocks. About the riches of Timbuktu, its house of learning. They asked if he’d given a lot of homework as a teacher, and he told them about the Civilization Project, in which his students had twelve weeks to imagine and invent a geography, a culture, an economy, a language, myths, a government, a story of origin. “You should try it,” he said. “Make up a society.”
“We already are,” they said.
In the evening, he pulled out the windup radio, and they gathered around it like a fire. The static gave way to voices—not Jonathan Blue, but other voices. Two young men talking about bicycles. “Another fix-in this Saturday. Ten a.m., Squat Park. Bring food to share. We’ll get you tuned up so you can get your bikes rolling! Want a fix-in near you? Let us know! Leave a note in our comment box, or send us mail via Velocipede.”
The girls took guesses at the meaning of the word “Velocipede.” Carson described the old-fashioned bicycles with the giant front wheel and told them about the Pony Express and, now, this new bicycle mail service.
The girls liked the sound of the radio guy, Flash. “He sounds cute,” one said.
When Carson gave them the radio, they squealed with delight. He felt absolved.
He left them and continued west. He came to a stand of aspens in the skirts of the mountains and stood amidst their thin, white trunks. He summoned the image of their yellow leaves in autumn, their flicker in a breeze. Inside his boots, he could feel how his skin was rubbed raw. He said a prayer and then kept going.
The tracks sliced through the mountains, and he marveled at the engineering of that. The air became thin and clarifying. Within the damp darkness of tunnel after tunnel, his breath quickened and his mind made convincing arguments about his end. But again and again, he emerged into light.
When the snow came, he wrapped his face in a scarf and kept walking. He bent to touch what had accumulated, a cold white invitation, then began to dig. Into the depression, he deposited the old farmhouse, the lost future, any magical thinking about June’s return. He filled the hole again with snow.
As the mountains gave way to desert and the air grew warmer, the steady cadence of his breathing returned. He let the laugh of the woman he walked toward move him like a verb, bold and continuous. More and more, he walked with her name in his hands, in his chest, in his head. Beatrix. He held her name on his tongue.
Every morning and every evening at the designated hour, Rosie and her abuela went with their assigned group to the prayer tent. “Rise, rise, rise,” everyone would chant. “In the darkness, we find lightness.” Sometimes during the chanting, Rosie fell asleep. Sometimes, she fell into daydreams—she was back on Halcyon with Beatrix in the garden, or hanging out at school with a friend, or even wandering a village in Mexico, looking for her mom or dad.
When Mr. Blue came in to preach, everyone got spastic about it. Women would gasp. Whenever Blue held out his arms, the tent itself seemed to quake a little.
One evening, Rosie finally saw Jesús. “Over here!” she said, waving her arms.
“Sit down, Rosie!” her abuela said.
Jesús came, smiling, and gave both Rosie and her abuela a big hug. Dark circles puddled below his eyes, and the creases on his forehead seemed deeper.
“Where’ve you been?” Rosie asked.
Before he could say anything, the prayer chant started, filling the space with sound. Jesús leaned toward Rosie and said, “Our song is better, que no?”
Rosie nodded.
“Keep singing it, Rosie. You’ve got the voice for it.”
Rosie’s face warmed with the compliment.
“So much union here,” Abuela whispered to Jesús. “We are so lucky, no?”
“Se dicen que el sol brilla como el oro. Yo te digo otra cosa—y busco un farol,” Jesús sang softly to Rosie. They say the gold here shines like the sun so high and bright. I say it’s fool’s gold—go look for another light.
“What do you mean?” Rosie asked.
One of the men in white shirts walked toward them. “Sing to me, Rosie,” Jesús said. “Sing to me now. Spanish, mejor.”
Rosie bit her lip, suddenly self-conscious. She gave him a few lines from the verse she’d composed about the turd biscuits. “Those cookies are so gross, made up of sand and dust. I just want to throw them to the ground, won’t eat them out of disgust.”
Jesús sang back, in Spanish, “Don’t you worry now, my friend, there are other pretty things. And you know how to spot them, and you know how to sing. Have you seen a star shining red, up in the nighttime sky? That glowing star up there can be your new eye.”
“I haven’t seen any red star,” Rosie said.
“Look for it tonight,” Jesús said. “It’s in the western sky, where we came from, Rosie. Remember that. Whenever you follow it, you are going west.”
Rosie nodded. “Did you hear that, Abuela?” But her grandmother’s eyes were looking outside, fixed to the large white sculptures.
CHAPTER 16
On Halcyon Street, the autumn days blended into one another. Time became elastic. Birds flew in slow motion. The hours were a repetition of tasks.
Keep paying attention, Beatrix told herself. The particulars of her revolution had shifted. There were no maps to study, no borders to cross. Her country was now only five miles wide. She could bicycle across it without a passport.
Beatrix had kept the flames going on the two candles from Maria del Carmen’s altar, and she paused now and then to look at the flickering light. It was something close to prayer, she guessed.
One morning, she did a live interview with Frida from the Gold Mine. They were now offering fresh produce for sale, Frida said, which made it extra worth the trip. That, and she said that a new shipment of auto parts mined from the municipal parking lots had just arrived, with tires and engine parts for reuse.
“And that is why it’s called the Gold Mine,” Beatrix said, signing off.
After Frida left, Beatrix found Gary outside, measuring one of the back windows of his house. “You putting on storm windows already?” she asked.
“Just making measurements for
some weather stripping. Autumn chill is already here.” He wiped his hands on his jeans. He nodded to the garage. “Nice interview, by the way,” he said. “Always a treasure amidst the trash.”
“That’s what Reilly Crawford says,” Beatrix said. “Oh, get this, after the broadcast, Frida told me they’re now starting to use a mobile cart, a way to speed up circulation of recycled and reusable stuff. Kind of like the library.”
“Kind of like Reilly Crawford,” Gary said.
Beatrix cleared her throat. “Exactly,” she said. But inside, she wondered if The Red Raven was really making a difference or if they were just fooling themselves.
“What’ll he do next?” Gary said.
“Ten-eighty on your AM dial,” Beatrix said, then headed down the block to home.
That afternoon, a hard rain came as Beatrix read Red Raven scripts. Outside, the thunder boomed as lightning moved closer. One crack made her jump in her chair—way too close. She peered out the window, making sure all the hens had taken cover in the coop.
As the sky cleared, she heard Gary’s voice in the hallway, calling her name. He stood at the bottom of the stairs with his hands in his pockets, his face looking pained.
“The transmitter is fried,” he said.
The words entered her head, but somehow she could not decipher them. She pictured fried chicken, the crispy crinkles of golden batter. She scanned her memory of the radio equipment in Gary’s garage and remembered the black box, its little white EKG-looking symbol.
“The lightning did it,” he said. “It means we can’t broadcast tonight. We need to replace the transmitter first.”
“Are you kidding me?” Beatrix said. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
Dragon stepped into the hallway, and Gary explained again what had happened.
“But we have to broadcast tonight,” Beatrix said. “It’s a huge night. They’re all waiting for it.” The love episode, in which shy, quiet Reilly would muster the courage to ask Wren, a widowed mother of three, out on a date.
“Can’t we just replace the transmitter?” Dragon said.
“Sure. Try Best Buy. They’re open twenty-four hours,” Gary said.
Beatrix sighed. “Surely someone has one.”
“I can fix ours,” Gary said, “but I’ll need to replace some of the parts. Your friend at the Gold Mine mentioned auto parts. If that shipment was from cop cars or fire engines, they’ll all have mobile radios. That’s what we need.”
“There’s no harm in trying,” Beatrix said. “Let’s go.”
“Beatrix,” Dragon said. “The show is supposed to go live in”—he looked at his wrist, absent a watch—“two hours? No way we can get there and back by then. We’ll go first thing in the morning.” He looked at Beatrix. “It’s okay. It will build suspense.”
Beatrix sighed but acquiesced. They were on the same side, after all.
Carson walked into the Basin and Range desert. Utah. Mining territory. The hills morphed into rocky piles of taupe, red, and gray. Golden-leafed aspens stood out from the electric-blue sky. He was weary but felt a surge every time he exhaled into the cold, his breath visible like smoke.
The tracks followed a state highway for a long stretch, and there, Carson heard a strange but familiar sound, like the whisper of someone from his past whose voice he could no longer place. It trickled into his ear softly at first, then rose into a full motorized growl. He turned around to listen and saw a faded yellow Toyota pickup truck, circa 1983, advancing toward him. Once upon a time, he’d had the same model in red.
“The brakes don’t work so good. I suggest you move!” the driver shouted from the window. He wore a black patch over one eye; long gray hair fell to his shoulders.
The truck coasted to a stop. “Where you headed?” the driver said. He was not a young man but seemed fit and strong, at least in the arms.
“West,” Carson said.
“Well, you can ride along with Miss Daisy as far as she takes us, if you like.”
Carson hesitated for a second, summoning Ayo’s smarts. He tried to size up the driver, but it was tough get an accurate read from outside the truck. On the door were monikers penned in black marker: Grizzly Joe, Claybaby, Mustard face, Beat-(up)-nik. Other riders, he guessed. He laughed out loud. He’d been waiting two thousand miles for this. He threw his pack in the back, where it joined at least a dozen five-gallon containers—biofuel?—and got in the truck.
Once moving, Carson marveled at the passing landscape. He rolled down the window and leaned out, as if to gulp the transient air. The chug of the engine pleased him like no other sound had pleased him in a long time. He ran his hand over the dashboard and said, “Thank you, thank you.”
“I’m Felix,” the driver said. “Been on the road for years. Sent off by a lady, you could say. Katrina, that is. August twenty-ninth, 2005. She kissed me a little too hard, knocked me off my feet. Never thought I would leave Louisiana. Glad I did, though. Can’t even think of that place without seeing someone in tears. Too many sad ghosts.”
Carson listened, remembering the wrath of Katrina, and the racism in her wake. Everything about the Gulf Coast seemed drenched in human error. Thoughts of the flightless birds, coated in oil, still sank his heart.
“So you’ve been on the road ever since?” Carson asked.
“Except for when I lived on a boat for a blink. I just do my thing and watch what comes at me.”
The mountains sped toward them. The sky expanded.
“How’d the boat come at you?” Carson asked.
“I was in Florida. That’s when things really started going downhill. Remember all the millionaires with their megayachts? Never paid for. So when the dollar fell, they left them for the repo man. And you know what some crazy motherfuckers did? They just untied their boats. Let them float out to sea. Lucky thing there are dumpster divers, deep sea divers, and crafty squatters, and when we see a good discarded thing float by, we do a little repossession of our own.”
Amused, Carson said, “I’ve been wanting to repossess a horse.”
“Well, there you go then. You just send out that prayer, no strings attached, and see what comes galloping up at you.”
“This fine truck is what came galloping up,” Carson said.
“Loping is more like it. Listen to how she purrs,” Felix said, running his hand along the dashboard. He gestured to the back of the truck. “Dunkin’ Donuts was a windfall. Cooking oil! I’m just going until I can’t go anymore. That’s my plan. What about you? You’re staying off the highways, I see.”
“Railroad,” Carson said.
“Smart man. Say, you’re not a preacher, are you? You kinda look like a preacher.”
“No, definitely not a preacher,” Carson said. “I just met one, though. Jonathan Blue. The Center.”
“Oh, that guy?” Felix said. “I heard he’s not even at the real center. That would be somewhere in Kansas.”
“Wyoming,” Carson said. “Left of center.”
“That’s like God’s joke right there. I’m surprised you got farther left than that. I heard they don’t let you leave once you get there.”
Carson laughed. “They let me leave pretty quickly. But maybe not others.” He thought of Marcy and chewed his lip.
Felix crinkled his eyebrows together and raised his voice a note. “All the women in long skirts, right?”
“Yes, all the women in long skirts.”
“You thought you wanted to ‘rise, rise, rise,’ then decided hell was better?”
“I went to investigate,” Carson said.
“What are you, CIA?”
“No, no. Just a historian, chronicling the times.”
He told Felix about the gardens and the system of chores, and about Blue—his convictions, his philosophies. But he kept thinking of Marcy, the look on her face. He shook off the memory.
“Did they have any special Kool-Aid? Or how about that poppy tea I’ve heard about?”
“Poppy tea?”
> “All the rage, supposedly. Like heroin, but just a tea. Any hippie can make it. Ha! No matter what, the people find their drugs, don’t they? Anything to get out of pain.” Felix took one hand off the wheel to adjust his eye patch.
“I have to admit, it was pretty remarkable,” Carson said. “The system, the organization, the way he has attracted so many people there.”
“And they’ll all rise into the ether one day.”
“I didn’t quite get that part,” Carson said.
“Not on the itinerary?” Felix said.
“I guess not,” Carson said, feeling foolish for all the things he’d missed.
The landscape turned to desert. Pale-green sage and black brush reached out across the flats.
“A historian,” Felix said, nodding. He let out a whistle. “‘The past is never dead. It’s not even past.’”
“The past seems pretty past to me,” Carson said.
“But not dead. Tell me I’m not the only one who hears it, ringing in my brain loud enough to deafen me at least once every day.”
“You’re not the only one,” Carson said. Different days brought different things—his students, old songs, his former morning routine, people he used to know. “The train comes through a lot. Some days, I swear I hear it coming.”
“Like a cell phone,” Felix said. “The phantom ring! Remember that? How you’d hear your phone even when it wasn’t ringing?”
“Yeah,” Carson said.
Outside, the desert blended blue, beige, and green. “Look at this moonscape, would you?” Felix said. “So sparse and beautiful. But you’re only good if you’ve got water. This is bone country. Nothing but skeletons clacking around out here.”
After a while, Carson said, “Sometimes, I hear the future more loudly than the past.”
“The horizon lures every traveler with a pretty melody,” Felix said. “It can paint a pretty picture sometimes.”